HOW 5 RIDINGS HELPED O’TOOLE.
BROAD SUPPORT, ESPECIALLY IN QUEBEC, KEY TO VICTORY
Adetailed breakdown of the Conservative leadership vote shows that Erin O’Toole emerged victorious thanks to two key factors: he won Quebec and he won the support of Leslyn Lewis and Derek Sloan voters.
The race used a ranked ballot, meaning the lastplace candidate in each round is eliminated and their second-place votes are redistributed until one candidate passes the 50-per-cent threshold.
The system also gives equal weight to every federal riding, regardless of votes. That means a Quebec riding with 50 total votes counts the same as an Alberta riding with 1,000 votes. To win, a candidate must have support evenly across the country — a factor that particularly affected Lewis, who actually had the most overall votes in round two, but had them too heavily concentrated in a few regions.
In the end, O’Toole beat out Peter MacKay in the final round by a margin of 57 per cent to 43 per cent. Here are five ridings where the first ballot results help explain how O’Toole pulled it off.
BÉCANCOUR– NICOLET–SAUREL
O’Toole: 33 votes (62.3%) MacKay: 19 votes (35.8%) Lewis: 1 vote (1.9%)
Sloan: 0 votes (0%)
If you live outside Quebec, you’ve probably never heard of this riding that runs along the south shore of the Saint Lawrence River. But it’s one of many Quebec ridings where O’Toole took the lion’s share of the handful of votes that were cast.
Of all the things that killed MacKay’s chances of winning this race, losing to O’Toole in Quebec — with a quarter of all seats nationally — was arguably the single biggest factor.
Lewis and Sloan were a non-factor in many Quebec ridings, given their lack of French and smaller organizations. Quebec was a fight between MacKay and O’Toole, and literally every single vote mattered.
In Bécancour–Nicolet– Saurel, O’Toole got just 14 more votes than MacKay, but it gave him 62.3 per cent of the riding’s electoral points. Repeat that margin in riding after riding in Quebec, and that’s how O’Toole won the province.
REGINA–WASCANA
Lewis: 268 votes (40.6%) O’Toole: 161 votes (24.4%) MacKay: 136 votes (20.6%) Sloan: 95 votes (14.4%) The great surprise of the leadership race was the strength of Lewis in Western Canada, and nowhere was this more true than Saskatchewan. On the first ballot, Lewis took the lead in every Saskatchewan riding except for one.
But Saskatchewan’s small population means it matters much less for the overall results than Quebec does. While Quebec has 78 ridings worth 7,800 electoral points in the overall standings, Saskatchewan has 14 ridings worth 1,400 points. The number of actual voters in the leadership race doesn’t matter.
It remains very impressive that Lewis, a relative unknown coming into the race, managed to win a province. Unfortunately for her, it was a province that simply wasn’t big enough to keep her from finishing third.
CENTRAL NOVA
MacKay: 937 votes (86.1%) Lewis: 60 votes (5.5%) Sloan: 50 votes (4.6%)
O’Toole: 41 votes (3.8%) The race’s largest margin of victory came in the Nova Scotia riding MacKay held as MP for 18 years, from 1997 to 2015. He crushed it in his home province, carrying the 11 ridings with 65 per cent of available electoral points.
But MacKay needed to put up big numbers like this in more areas to win. The dynamics of the ranked ballot were working against him: two of the four candidates (Lewis and Sloan) were social conservatives whose supporters were more likely to rank O’Toole above MacKay.
To win, MacKay needed to jump out to a very large lead on the first ballot.
He accomplished this in some areas, such as the Toronto suburbs of Brampton, Mississauga and Markham. He also delivered big wins in the Vancouver suburb of Surrey.
But despite winning both B.C. and Ontario overall, the margins just weren’t big enough to make up for his weaknesses on the prairies and in Quebec. Outside of a few strongholds, MacKay wasn’t enough of a frontrunner and it doomed his campaign.
CALGARY MIDNAPORE
O’Toole: 623 votes (41.6%) MacKay: 365 votes (24.4%) Lewis: 356 votes (23.8%) Sloan: 154 votes (10.3%) His home riding is in a Toronto suburb, but O’Toole still managed to hold the Conservative fortress of Alberta in this race, winning the province overall and taking a third of the electoral points.
Lewis finished second in the province, with MacKay coming third and Sloan last.
O’Toole targeted Alberta right from the start, launching his campaign in Calgary. But he also secured the endorsement of Alberta Premier Jason Kenney, a hugely influential figure among conservatives. Calgary Midnapore was Kenney’s old federal riding, and O’Toole won it easily with 41.6 per cent of the vote.
For his overall strategy to work, O’Toole had to stay close to MacKay on the first ballot by being competitive across the country. The fact that O’Toole won both Alberta and Quebec shows that he successfully executed on this plan.
KITCHENER– CONESTOGA
MacKay: 212 votes (27.9%) Lewis: 210 votes (27.6%) Sloan: 179 votes (23.5%)
O’Toole: 160 votes (21%) This southwestern Ontario riding is one of the best examples of how O’Toole used the ranked ballot to ultimately take down MacKay.
On the first ballot, O’Toole finished fourth and MacKay finished first. But the social conservative vote here — which is strong across southwestern Ontario — would prove to be the most important factor.
After Sloan dropped off the ballot due to his national numbers, Lewis vaulted into first place in this riding by picking up the vast majority of Sloan’s second-choice support.
But then when Lewis dropped off the ballot due to her own national numbers, her support mostly flowed to O’Toole.
By the third round, O’Toole had jumped from fourth place to first in Kitchener–Conestoga, carrying 60.3% per cent of the vote. MacKay finished well behind him with 39.7 per cent.